Guides · Tue 27 Oct 2026
Cheung Chau Bun Festival 2027: buns, parades and the midnight scramble
One small island, tens of thousands of buns, children floating above the parade and a midnight climb up a tower of them: the Bun Festival on Cheung Chau, expected in the week of 10 to 14 May 2027.
The Bun Festival is Hong Kong's most joyful strange festival: a few days each spring when the fishing island of Cheung Chau thanks the god Pak Tai, feeds the hungry ghosts, and covers a steel tower with buns for climbers to scramble up at midnight. Our festival listing carries the 2027 window, Monday 10 to Friday 14 May, labelled as a tentative date: the festival's main day follows the lunar calendar to the Birthday of the Buddha, Thursday 13 May 2027, which is a public holiday, and the official programme for the edition is published nearer the time. The shape of the festival, though, is set by a tradition that does not change.
What happens
The festival builds for days: bakeries produce the ping an buns, stamped with the red character for peace, by the ten thousand, temples fill, and the island keeps a vegetarian kitchen for the festival period, famously including its fast food outlets. The main day brings the Piu Sik parade, the floating colours, in which small children dressed as deities and modern heroes appear to float above the crowd on hidden frames, processing from the Pak Tai Temple through the lanes with drums, gongs and lion dancers. After midnight comes the bun scramble: climbers race up the bun tower beside the temple's sports ground and strip it of buns against the clock, a revival of the older scramble that now runs as a sport with heats through the festival.
Getting there, and back
Cheung Chau has no cars and one way in: the ferry from Central Pier 5, about 35 minutes on the fast boats and under an hour on the ordinary ferries. On the main day the queues at the pier are part of the festival; go early, or go the day before and stay in one of the island's small hotels and guesthouses. The scramble ends after midnight and the ferries run extra sailings, but the simplest version of the day for most visitors is the parade in the afternoon, buns and the seafood restaurants of the waterfront in the evening, and a ferry home before the island's biggest crowd heads for the same pier. The island itself deserves the hours either way: the Pak Tai Festival listing covers the temple side of the same days.
The honest label
We publish the 2027 window as tentative because that is what the evidence supports today: the pattern is certain, the edition's programme is not yet published. When the official dates land, the listing's label changes and the check date on its page updates. That is the deal this calendar makes on every record, and the festival is a good one to test it on, because nobody who plans a trip around 13 May will be disappointed by the island that week.
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